This invention relates to a drilling hole locator for tubes and more particularly to a device attachable to an end of a cut tube for providing precise location for holes to be drilled in the tube.
In many instances, when pipe or tubing is cut in the field, it is necessary to provide for new holes to be placed in the side walls of the tubing. It is common practice to initially drill a pilot hole in the tube, and then a larger hole is drilled with an appropriately sized drill bit. However, drilling of holes in cylindrical objects presents a number of problems, particularly as to the precision in forming the holes. In many instances, with the tube being cylindrical in shape, it has been common practice to provide clamping arrangements that are generally very crude in holding the tubing so the holes can be drilled, and precision-formed holes are difficult to obtain. For more sophisticated equipment for holding the tubing steady and aligning the drill for precision hole formation, the equipment has been relatively large, cumbersome and costly.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a relatively small device that allows holes to be put into the side wall of a tube at a preselected distance from a cut end of the tube.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a relatively small device for alignment of the holes to be drilled in the side wall of a tube.
It is an even further object of the present invention to provide a hole locating device that allows users in the field to cut tubing to short lengths and be capable of drilling a required hole in an appropriate position.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a hole-locating device that fits over the end of a cut piece of tubing, wherein the outer wall of the device has relatively flat sides. This would enable the device to be held in a clamping arrangement, with at least one pair of parallel flat sides having aligned slots or openings therein to which a drill bit may be passed in drilling a pair of aligned holes in a tube.
More particularly, the present invention provides a drill locator for locating drilling holes in tubes, which includes a body having a top end and an opposed bottom open end. The body includes an outer wall having at least two parallel opposed sides which extend downwardly from the top end to the opposed bottom open end and an inner wall spaced inwardly from the outer wall. The spacing between the outer wall and the inner wall define a tube end receiving section. The outer side wall and the inner wall each have two openings therein spaced 180xc2x0 apart, all four of the openings being in alignment.
These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon consideration of the preferred embodiment described hereinafter.